The Turkish government held the ceremony to commemorate the
opening of the undersea tunnel between the two sides of the Bosporus Straits on
October 29. Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe attended the ceremony. The
undersea tunnel is a yen-loan-financed project, and it was constructed by Obayashi
with an investment of 150 billion yen. It is about 13.6 km, of which 1.4 km is beneath
the ocean bed.
Turkish National Railway will operate trains on the 13.6 km with
five stops and transport 1.5 million people per day. It will connect the
existing line with this new line in 2015. The undersea tunnel will be used for
the transport people daytime, and freight trains will transport commodities
nighttime. The ocean current is so fast in the Bosporus Straits that various
innovative construction methods were employed.
The move
to use cheap surplus electricity for mass production of hydrogen by electrolysis
of water and use the produced hydrogen as a source of energy of power
generation as needed is expected to spread. That is, hydrogen will play a role
of a battery. Kawasaki Heavy is ahead of others in this move, and it is
negotiating on a project to liquefy hydrogen with the Russian leading electric
power company RusHydro headquartered in Oblast Magadan
near Polustrov Kamchatka. Because surplus electricity generated by hydraulic
power generation is very cheap, it will be possible to supply liquefied hydrogen
to Japan at a low cost. The company plans to start the demonstration experiment
in Russia in 2017, and subsequently build a large-scale plant with an annual
production capacity of 90,000 tons with an investment of 20-30 billion yen.
It wishes to market liquefied hydrogen imported
form Russia as fuel for power generation. Development of the technology to
liquefy hydrogen using cheap nighttime electricity will open up the road to use
liquefied hydrogen as fuel for daytime power generation. Theoretically, it will
also be possible to transport and store hydrogen produced by electrolysis of
water using cheap electricity generated by photovoltaic generation in such hot regions
as the Middle East and Africa. It is expected that spread of hydrogen power
generation will contribute greatly to the spread of renewable energy.
Chiyoda Corp.
will construct the world’s first import and distribution base of hydrogen in
Kawasaki in 2015. In the base, it will start to operate the world’s first
large-scale hydrogen power plant in the same year. The hydrogen generation can
basically use the existing equipment for natural gas thermal power plant. Chiyoda’s
hydrogen power plant will burn the mixture of hydrogen and natural gas, and hydrogen
will account for up to 70% of the mixture. The output will be 90,000 kW that is
enough electricity for 30,000 standard households. The generation cost will be
lower than oil thermal generation that costs 22 yen per kW and emissions of harmful
gases will decrease drastically. The required amount of hydrogen is 200 million
cubic meters (about 18,000 tons) per year.
Choyoda's demonstration plant of
producing hydrogen fuel
Chiyoda
is ahead in hydrogen generation because it is the only company in the world
that has a technology for mass production, transport, and stable supply of
hydrogen. The technology dissolves gas that generates in oil drilling in an organic
solvent and transport the gas at normal temperature. The special equipment will
recover only hydrogen in the Kawasaki base that has an annual capacity to
produce 600 million cubic meters of hydrogen at about 30 yen per cubic meter. The
company plans to decrease the cost to 20 yen per cubic meter to compete
successfully with coal-fired thermal power that costs 10 yen per kW at present
by spreading hydrogen generation.
It is
estimated that hydrogen generation will account for 15% of power demand in 2030,
much higher than 9% in Europe and 7.3% in North America.
Hydrogen
is growing its presence as the next energy source, and the age of hydrogen is
coming. Toyota and Honda are scheduled to launch fuel-cell vehicles that use
hydrogen as fuel in Japan, the U.S., and Europe in 2015. Technology for mass
production, safe storage, and safe transport of hydrogen is also developing
fast. Toyota’s trial fuel-cell vehicle has a travel distance of 650 km per
refill that is three times longer travel distance of an electric vehicle per
charge. It traveled 320 km from Nagoya to Tokyo without refill. A fuel-cell
vehicle will be put on the market for five million yen in 2015, and a total of
two million fuel-cell vehicles will supposedly be traveling in Japan in 2025.
Let's drive a Toyota's fuel-cell vehicle
Hydrogen
can be recovered from water, and it is environmentally-friendly and
inexhaustible. It can be mass produced in chemical plants. In addition, when
cost of renewable energy decreases considerably in the future, it will be
possible to take out hydrogen from water by electrolysis. Nikkei BP Clean Tech Institute predicts that the hydrogen-related infrastructure market will be
37,000 billion yen in 2030, of which 7,000 billion yen is the fuel-cell vehicle
market. There will be 3,500,000 fuel-cell vehicles traveling in the world, and
the related infrastructure including hydrogen station will be 22,000 billion
yen. The Japanese government subsidizes the construction cost of hydrogen
stations, and plans to build 100 hydrogen stations in 2015 and increase the
number of hydrogen stations to 1,000 in 2025.
Hydrogen is inexhaustile
JX Nippon Oil and Energy will install hydrogen production equipment in its oil refineries
after 2016 and construct a system to distribute hydrogen across the country. A
huge amount of hydrogen is generated in an oil refinery, but it is technically
very hard to eliminate impurities. With its self-developed separating film
technology, the company plans to produce hydrogen of nearly 100% purity.
Fujitsu and Metawater will jointly start the business that utilizes
big data for the management and maintenance of water infrastructure like water
purification plant by the end of 2014. Metawater will collect data and
Fujitsu will analyze them. Metawater will collect photos, sounds, and comments
of workers that local governments across the country obtain in the inspection
of pumps and water pipes. Fujitsu will analyze them to work out the optimal
management method for lower maintenance cost. It will start to provide local
governments with the cloud service using tablet PCs within this month. Workers
will input comments, photos, and motor sounds into their tablet PCs while they
are inspecting the water infrastructure.
Data
collected by the workers will be combined with information collected by the
sensors installed on the pumps and purifying facilities. A water purification
plant will be reproduced in the virtual space to specify dickey parts and
sections. It is estimated that a local government with a population between
100,000 and 200,000 people needs about 100 million yen per year for the
management and maintenance of water infrastructure. The system to be developed
by the two companies is expected to halve the cost to 50 million yen per year
Chugoku Electric Power Plant introduced the "malfunction prediction
system for large plant" developed by NEC
to one of its nuclear power plants on a trial basis. The system analyzes a huge
amount of data collected from the sensors installed in the plant and
automatically defines the normal operation, and informs abnormality as soon as
it finds an operation different from the normal operation. NTT Data
commercialized a system to utilize data obtained from multiple sensors installed
on the bridge for repair work with a view to lengthening the life of a bridge.
Big
data are now used mostly for promotional activities in marketing, but utilizing
them for the management and maintenance of infrastructure is spreading.
The “Cruise Train Seven Stars in Kyushu” that is the luxurious sleeper train operated by JR Kyushu inaugurated the service on October 15. The word “Seven” means seven
prefectures of Kyushu, the number of trains because it is made up of seven
trains, and seven major sightseeing materials of Kyushu, namely nature, food,
hot spring, history and culture, power spot, human nature, and train. Because JR
Kyushu positions the new sleeper train as the “space for adults,” children
younger than 12 years old are not allowed to participate in the tour. In
addition, smoking is not allowed in the train.
The
new luxurious sleeper train adopted the active suspension for train developed
by Nippon Steel and Sumitomo Metal. This active suspension is the mechanism to decrease
the rolling of a train. Responding to the sensor that detects the oscillation
of the train, the actuator generates the reversely-oriented force to eliminate
the oscillation. Besides advanced technologies that materialized this train,
people can get excited with supplies, such as cup, dish, plate, chair, desk,
and sofa, made by Japanese traditional craftsmanship on the train. You need to
prepare 380,000-550,000 yen for a four-day three-night trip (two stays in the
train and one stay in a hotel) per person.
The gorgeous "Cruise Train Seven Stars in Kyushu"
Inside the "Cruise Train Seven Stars in Kyushu"
The most expensive deluxe suite Some day, you can be a guest.
